Instructions

ZOOM IN by clicking on the page. A slider will appear, allowing you to adjust your zoom level. Return to the original size by clicking on the page again.

MOVE the page around when zoomed in by dragging it.

ADJUST the zoom using the slider on the top right.

ZOOM OUT by clicking on the zoomed-in page.

SEARCH by entering text in the search field and click on "In This Issue" or "All Issues" to search the current issue or the archive of back issues
respectively.
.

PRINT by clicking on thumbnails to select pages, and then press the
print button.

SHARE this publication and page.

ROTATE PAGE allows you to turn pages 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise.Click on the page to return to the original orientation. To zoom in on a rotated page, return the page to its original orientation, zoom in, and
then rotate it again.

CONTENTS displays a table of sections with thumbnails and descriptions.

ALL PAGES displays thumbnails of every page in the issue. Click on
a page to jump.

TRAVEL
| 54 | ISSUE 592 MARCH 2017
us. He takes us to the flat roof of an
imposing Toucouleur-style merchant
house to view the mosque and
marketplace. It reinforces the scale
and the awe for both. Each three-
storey house has one tiny, shuttered
window for (unseen) homebound
women to watch street scenes. It also
incorporates a row of mud phalluses,
indicating the number of boys borne
into the household.
We duck and dive down alleyways
(UNESCO describes it as “anarchic
urbanisation”) to another baked roof,
this time to see the famous Malian
mud cloth. Pygmy becomes ringleader
of this women’s cooperative while the
artisans take a desultory, mute role.
My wife buys a special piece – as a wall
hanging, she says.
It’s hard to get one’s bearings in these
jumbled off-centre mud buildings. We
must be close to the river. Djenné is
built on the curved end of a large
mudflat in a floodplain surrounded
by tributaries of the Bani River that
flows into the Niger. To get here we
left our busted bus and arrived by
ferry with the locals and their animals.
In the annual flood, Djenné becomes
an island.
Dusk; we walk 300m to our overnight
accommodation, Le Campement. It’s a
camping ground with some buildings.
There is no discernible hotel in Djenné.
Delays have reduced our time to a
few hours – most of them, sleeping.
Dinner with other travellers means
eating outdoors at trestle tables. It’s
an acceptable meal in a pleasantly
cool and shady spot. Sleeping is either
a mattress on the flat roof or, for
rich tourists, “a double with fan and
bathroom”. The fan flops over loudly
on each oscillation, the bathroom is
a one-tap sink, and the double bed
resembles a ski slope. The room is a
windowless, upside down concrete
bowl baked under a tropical sun. Oh,
for the cool simplicity of a mattress on
the roof.
It’s a piccaninny dawn at 5am. I go
for a wander in the cool air, back to
the mosque for a last look. The busted
bus leaves after breakfast. I take a
different route that leads me past
majestic ruins, a reminder that this
dusty town was for many centuries
a major centre for Islamic culture and
learning, and a wealthy, trans-Saharan
trading city. Women bending double
sweep the streets with tiny handheld
twig brushes. Then I see him. He’s a
young man asleep alongside a wall,
just lying on the sandy ground. No
mat, no shelter, no possessions; he
gives visceral meaning to “dirt poor”.
It might be sleep-deprived tiredness,
but I am overcome. The image sears
my brain.
The empty marketplace is very
different now in half-light stillness.
Yesterday’s red sun is now a sliver of
silver moon behind a minaret. The
mosque is no longer imperious, but
a ghostly emerging outline, and I’m
feeling floaty... other-worldly.
The final question remains: how
can a mud building survive here for a
hundred years, even with low rainfall?
At the end of the rainy season the
town holds a festival with food
and music. Everyone participates,
especially the young men. They wait
patiently beside a special muddy pond
for the chief’s auspicious signal to
start. Suddenly a competitive rush of
youths collect basket-loads of mud,
running them to the mosque, where
skilled workers on palm wood ladders
attached to those jutting beams apply
their special mud-plaster offering.
Women and furtive-looking girls carry
water while experienced old men sit
proffering advice. Everyone owns this
magnificent mosque.
Next month Tim Dawe continues
his journey to Timbuktu through
remote Dogonland. 
ABOVE: A village by the Niger River near Mopti.
For more on Mali, read
Joshua Hammer’s The Bad-
ass Librarians of Timbuktu
(Simon and Schuster,
2016). It’s a rollicking
yarn lifting the veil on
medieval Mali, discovering
its priceless learned
manuscripts and reporting
on the events of saving
those manuscripts from
the 2012 Jihadi invasion.